Labour tumbles into the 20s in new poll, Opportunity hits 5%

Author: Adam Pearse,
Publish Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2026, 11:52am

Chris Hipkins' Labour Party has tumbled into the 20s in a new poll. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Labour Party has tumbled to 27.8% support in the latest Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll, its lowest vote share in that poll since December 2024.

Opportunity has also breached the 5% threshold to enter Parliament for the first time in a mainstream poll, increasing 2.8 percentage points to 6.1%.

The poll, conducted over August 1-4 and had a 3.1% margin of error, found all three parties considered the left bloc - Labour, the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori - all registering decreasing support, particularly for Te Pāti Māori which dropped to 1.5%, its worst result in this poll since March 2023.

Despite that, the current coalition would only just be able to form a government on the poll’s numbers with National and Act seeing slight bumps in support.

The polling period came directly after National leader Christopher Luxon describing a business community’s concerns as taking a “negative view” and saying they should be acting like an “adult”, which he later apologised for.

It also followed Act announcing it would strengthen powers for teachers to remove disruptive children from class, NZ First proposing to pay people to have more children and revealing Ron Mark was returning as a candidate. Labour did not announce policy over the polling period.

Labour’s support took a significant hit compared to the July Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll, dropping 3.7 points from 31.5% to 27.8%. While National has polled regularly in the 20s, its lowest return this year was 28.7% in a poll last month.

The Green Party dropped 0.3 points to 10.1%. Te Pāti Māori fell 1.9 points to 1.5%.

For the coalition parties, National received a slight uptick of 0.5 points to 31%. New Zealand First dropped 1.7 points to 9.1%, while Act was up slightly by 0.4 points to 7.3%.

A revelation in today’s poll was Opportunity overcoming the 5% threshold by registering 6.1% support, having reached 4.6% and 4.7% in several polls last month.

The poll’s seat projection in the House for the coalition parties dropped one to 61, enough for a majority. National had gained one seat on last month’s poll to have 40, NZ First dropped two to have 12 and Act was unchanged on nine.

For the “Opposition bloc” which consisted of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, it would receive 59 seats on those numbers with Labour dropping five to 36, the Greens unchanged on 13 and Te Pāti Māori dropping two to have two seats.

On 6.1%, Opportunity would have eight seats in the House.

Luxon had shot up in preferred Prime Minister ratings, increasing 4.1 points to 23.2%. Despite his party’s decline, Labour leader Chris Hipkins had increased 0.6 points to 19.8%.

NZ First leader Winston Peters had dipped 1.3 points to 10.5% while Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and Act leader David Seymour were on 4.8% and 3.8% respectively.

Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.